MADE OF WASTE 1993-1998

Whilst searching at the RCA in 1992 for innovative ways to connect furniture with wider issues, Jane Atfield came across an American couple from Missouri who were fabricating a colourful board material from discarded plastic bottles. The samples looked very inspiring and the material offered the opportunity to use domestic waste as a resource. Soon Atfield was importing the recycled sheets from Yemm & Hart and experimenting with making furniture from them. Her first recycled plastic chair, produced whilst still at college, was based on an early Rietveld design. This was followed by the RCP2 chair whose simple design celebrated the evocative character of the material.

MADE OF WASTE was set up in 1993 as an agency for recycled materials, aiming to research and develop UK possibilities and make the resulting panels available to architects and designers. It was also a vehicle for Atfield to explore the use of recycled materials within her own design projects, which were widely exhibited.

The design journalist Sylvia Katz introduced her in 1994 to a plastics industry insider, Colin Williamson and MADE OF WASTE started working with Stanley Smith Ltd in West London to produce recycled plastic sheets. The process involved liaising with community recycling schemes to collect the discarded high density polyethylene (HDPE) bottles, including shampoo, detergent and milk containers, colour sorting and chipping them before being made into sheet materials using heat and pressure (in presses originally intended for manufacturing plywood).

The resulting material attracted a lot of interest and over the next few years new recycled sources were developed including a high impact polystyrene (HIPS) range from used plastic coathangers and yogurt pots. The idea of designing custom-made materials in collaboration with architects was extended, linking up with local councils, recycling operations and dismantling depots to find appropriate raw materials. MADE OF WASTE sheets were incorporated into a wide range of projects from internal shopfits for clothing shops such as Zara and Blanoo; walls and bathrooms in the Eco-logic houses in Parc de la Villette, Paris; shelter structures by KleinDythan in Tokyo; Peter Savilles kitchen and various Body Shop fittings.

Investment was required to extend the activities of MADE OF WASTE, but during the 1990s this proved difficult with little support available at that time in the form of public grants. In addition, by 1998, there were strains within the company as to which direction it should take. Atfield favoured a social enterprise, not for profit approach with emphasis on developing community production facilities (hence local waste could end up as useful objects within the same area - eg plastic container school waste could be recycled into classroom furniture). However, the resulting disagreements eventually led to her reluctant withdrawal. MADE OF WASTE was closed in 1998. Colin Williamson started re-selling recycled plastic sheets soon after as Smile Plastics Ltd, which is still operational today.